into cross agency coordination. >> tools to help prevent and fight future wild land fires. they currently provide research and tools such as fire weather predictions, satellite imagery, resurgence in building codes, and studies of major catastrophic fires and their afterwards. greater federal research into satellites, climate technology can revolutionize preparedness and response. as we adapt new technology like unmanned aircraft systems, we can provide a host of new tools, most importantly we can develop an integrated picture. this will allow us to effectively save lives and property of the growing wild land fire problem. as federal research is focused on the problem, i'd like to highlight emerging technology for them to consider. ground-based, airborne, and satellite remote sensing systems

can provide an integrated early warning system and bert picture of the incident. sthrites can identify fires in low density areas and near critical infrastructure. also it can be used to provide information about fuels and droughts. maps can guide fuels and other mitigation projects. they can provide real time and interactive maps to assist commanders during a fire. remote sensing data and risk maps can be used to provide predictive analytics. this information can be used to identify at-risk areas and focus community preparedness for mitigation efforts. the u.a.s. provides several capabilities. they can whoever over a fire. infrared cameras can be used to identify hot spots and a wealth of real time data to firefighters in the field. mr. litzenberg: the development. firefighter location tracking's tell would be a game changer t could improve firefighter safety

and reduce the number of deaths and injuries that occur each year. i.s.c. recommends the u.s. forest service, fema, and nist work with the leadership council to develop a standard warning system. much like the richter scale for earthquakes, a standardized warning system would help emergency managers and the public. federal agencies should develop a standardized data collection system. this includes uniform formatting and methodology to capture and report wildland fire data, including information about mitigation, prevention, and recovery efforts. communiquive systems are the glue that links these together. unfortunately we are still facing problems with interoperability. it will be crucial to address this problem to take advantage of the new tools under development. i would like to highlight focusing on building out a public safety broadband network.

they offer potential but must be i.n.s. grated before incidents occur. the federal agencies should work with the forest service and department of interior, they should also work with state, tribal, territorial, and local partners. there are opportunities. in addition they should work with nongovernment organizations such as the i.f.c. our organization of at-risk communities can guide community preparedness efforts like the i.f.c. ready program. in addition the national fire academy, and other educational and media corporations can partner with federal services to get information and technology out. the wildland fire problem is a national challenge. we look forward to working with this committee. thank you for the opportunity to testify today. ms. lofgren: thank you very much for -- testimony. and all the witness force your testimony. at this point we'll give members

of the committee an opportunity to ask questions of our witnesses for about five minutes. and i will begin with myself. my constituents and constituents of many of us on this committee have been dealing with severe wildland or megafires in recent years. in fact, the wildland fires has grown from a season to really all year-round. we had fires in california in yes they are wildland firings but they impact areas. i won't for get visiting santa rosa, a little town, not in a forest, anti-fire came in and destroyed 5% of the housing in that suburban community. going to a suburb and all the houses are gone, the shopping

center is burned down. going with representative thompson, who represents that area, other areas of his district that just was burned. and the fire in paradise, 2018, doug lamalfa represents that area. the fire swept through. the entire town was also destroyed. obviously we have important steps to take. i'm interested in how we can enhance collaboration and coordination across the federal government along with the operational stakeholders on the frontlines. dr. clements and dr. mccarty, as academic researchers who rely on federal data and resources, where should the federal investment in wildfire science be most urgently directed? first you, dr. clements.

dr. clements: i think that funding these programs across all the agencies, particularly i think what we really need to focus on is research. so we can get better information in terms of better tools. and so having new tools will allow us to build what we need in terms of center systems because we are lacking those center systems. and also the fact that we need more platforms. as was stated earlier was the fact that we need better satellite technology. i think an investment in a lot of satellite development would be really beneficial to the entire wildfire science community. chair lofgren: dr. mccarty, do you have anything to add? dr. mccarty: i would add we need to think about as we develop these tools we communicate them with the public in an effective way and we also intergreat their input. i think a lot of times when we

think of wildfire risk and rue duesing risk we forget people are the main cause of fires school. and the more that we are transparent and open with the public, the better they will understand the risk, potentially act as good citizens to reduce that risk in the future. that includes science research, public health research as was mentioned. thank you. chair lofgren: are there opportunities for federal investment or direction that could have positive impacts in the short term? how long do we think it will take for the longer term investments to have realized impacts. dr. mccarty and then dr. clements. dr. mccarty: for federalized development these things take a while. decade old surveys are a decade long for a reason. but oftentimes it's the funding and the priority that limits the advancement of these systems. and i agree also with federal investment in the wildland fire

leadership council would also be needed so that it can interact with the incident command and the commanders on the field. and nifts as well as other signaturecies -- misas well as other agencies. that could be done quickly within an off-season to see if that implements better in the next fire season. chair lofgren: dr. clements, anything to add? dr. clements: one thing that could happen quickly is restoring the joint fire science program would allow researchers to engage quickly. that program actually funds things faster than a lot of federal agencies. the time between proposal submission and project start is really quick. that could be one way to just jump-start a lot of research quickly. chair lofgren:. mr. guyser and chief lit zenberg, i don't have much time left, but do you have anything to add?

>> there is one statement i would like to make. i agree with the comments from my colleagues on the panel. i would like to emphasize the application of that science also. there is a lot of really good work that's ongoing that will require just a little bit of funding. mr. geissler: maybe increase collaboration between state, local, and federal agencies. we could get this technology to the ground, to the firefighters where it's going to make a difference. that interaction and collaboration i find is something that we should foster and support as much as possible. chair lofgren: thanks. mr. litzenberg: i will add and echo. emphasize what george geissler just said. there are places where this integration is already happening effectively. as science and data is created, it will be important to get this to the boots on the ground, practitioners. wildland fire leadership council and national agen fire center

is happening already. chair lofgren: thank you very much. my time has expired. i would like to recognize the ranking member, mr. lucas. mr. lucas: thank you, madam chair. george and i think we have worked together long enough i can tell you george. you mentioned your testimony about listing several areas about how the committee could fill gaps and address shortfalls. and the chairwoman very appropriately went down that. could you expand for a moment thinking about from a committee's perspective, prioritizing those. where particularly, george, if you had the ability to give us guidance, how would you prioritize one, two, three, four, if you don't mind. mr. geissler: i would be glad to. thank you, representative lucas. yes, you can call me george, any time. the priority we are looking at -- i am very aware of a lot of the satellite technology as some of the early work that's been going on. in fact, in my time with oklahoma forest service we would

working closely with the severe storms lab doing early detection and notification modeling. i know that while there is long-term implications and development of the resource, currently there is a ton of opportunity just to get that on the ground right now working with local agencies. the other piece that i would really like to emphasize is the firefighter and resource tracking. this is a safety issue. there are a number of different systems that are out there right now. to be able to monitor and track our resources in real time, ensuring that we are putting them in the best place as possible, and utilizing them effectively, and especially monitoring them to ensure they are safe and that we are tracking. i know they are all going home. i think that's absolutely critical for us. we could make the changes that are necessary there. it's a standardization process and implementation process that really needs to occur.

the last one for me is very much -- i know there is a lot of work here, but it is something that i would sink my money into. that's the discussion around real time smoke modeling and continuing the decision space around that. smoke is probably the greatest public health issue related to wildland fire. and knowing what that implications are, being able to work with the public to emprove public health and firefighter health, in fact i think it's just part of that mission and the c.d.c. and e.p.a., along with several other regional smoke agencies, are doing some amazing work. and to kind of foster that even further would be a tremendous asset to us all. mr. lucas: you know my district, george, literally from the northeast corner of the state to the south corner, northwest half of oklahoma, weather

forecastsing is critical to my farmers. it's decisions about when to plant, fertilizer, harvest. utilize prescribed burns to help maintain the health of our range lands. one of the ways that my neighbors and my spouse use -- engage in decisionmaking is using oklahoma's system which provides up-to-the minute weather data. how do you utilize that data when you were state forester of oklahoma? and along with that, while you are thinking about it, do you believe that such a system should be emulated in other states to help benefit, prevent, and fight large-scale wildfires? mr. geissler: the system that oklahoma has is such a unique resource for firefighters. we can watch in almost real time whether there are wind changes. i remember distinctly my fire chief counting down a wind shift to people in the field telling them when it was going to occur.

he hit it within a minute. because we were watching it all on the screen. when i worked in other starts of the country, especially if you go to places like here in washington state, we struggle because there are so many microclimates and not enough monitors. but to be able to do that, to be able to tell folks in real time and do the prediction that folks that have all of that data like that system in oklahoma, was just unbelievably valuable to us in that environment. especially an environment that the type of fuels oklahoma has, it's a rapidly changing fire scenario. they are very quick, fine fueled. you have to know the wind very effectively to do it. in other parts of the country when i got -- get out, i do sometimes wax nostalgia about that system. having something to that effect across the united states would be amazing.

i think any fire manager that works in oklahoma is always thrilled by the app we can easily download on our phones and do that. so it's an excellent tool. i agree. mr. lucas: absolutely. the ability to protect both citizens' lives and their property. i know there have been many occasions as you a-- as you have alluded to when volunteer fire lines have been moved in a hurry because they couldn't survive where they were. an amazing system. with that, i thank you, george. i yield back. chair lofgren: thank you very much. the gentlelady from oregon is recognized. ms. bonamici. ms. bonamici: thank you so much, chair lofgren, chair johnson, and ranking member lucas. thank you to our witnesses for bringing your expertise. i represent northwest oregon. this past weekend the pacific northwest faced a record breaking heat wave with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees for multiple days. it was 115 at home yesterday. these dangerous temperatures

combined with a thin snow pack and below average precipitation are really raising alarms about our upcoming wildfire season. in fact, we have already seen a 6,200 acre fire on the confederated tribes of warm springs reservation in central oregon. fortunately, it's been mostly contained. oregonians have become too familiar with wildfires in recent years. over labor day weekend just last year, a powerful lens and very dry conditions resulted in unprecedented wildfires across the state. approximately a million acres burned. lives were lost, homes and communities were destroyed. hazy skies and smokey conditions made the air quality in portland comparable to some of the most polluted places on the planet. thank you, mr. geissler, for highlighting the health hazards of smoke. our communities are on the frontlines of climate crisis and wildfires are another example for the need of comprehensive and bold climate action.

dr. clements, you said we need to treat wildfires. in your testimony you noted the deficiencies in our understanding how wildfires create their own weather and how fire spheric interactions can affect spread. how would improving our understanding of fire weather help to mitigate or respond to wildfires? how can congress better direct federal agencies to conduct this important research? dr. clements: thank you. the fire weather gap -- knowledge gap is really -- is a problem because we just don't put those resources to fire weather like i mentioned thinking about the hurricane hunters. we don't have those resources for fire. we have suppression resources. tons of suppression resources. one thing we can do is we can instrument suppression aircraft with these tools, with the science tools. i have been advocating this for a while now. it wouldn't be that hard because everything would be automated. we could actually get all the

information in real time. so harnessing the current platforms that are surrounding fires is really important. and i think what we are missing is that we can't -- when we go -- for example my team, we go to active wildfires in california with doppler radar, doppler lie dar, the only team in the u.s. that can do that. there are no observations on active wildfires. it's not like they are storm chasers chasing fires. we are a small team and get just a little bit of information here and there. we need to change that concept and make it more of a priority where we are actually supporting the incident meteorologists of the national weather service on these big fires. in addition, i think we could support -- funding could be directed to noaa for this type of infrastructure. to support the meerts. they are tasked with forecasting very high resolution using models but they don't have the observations on the fire.

some of these fires are so remote doesn't wee don't have the observations. ms. bonamici: i want to try to get in another question. thank you so much. chief litzenberg, my colleagues on the select committee on climate crisis and releasing our plan to reach net zero emissions mid century. the plan represents the first significant legislative proposal to address the need for klatt my resilience investments, including investing in wildfire risk mapping systems that interclate relevant data from federal agencies, states, and partners. in your testimony you noted the importance of risk mapping and real time interactive maps. what are the implications of the expansion of the wildland urban interface without high resolution mapping? how could better maps, including powerful level data better inform planning and response decisions? mr. litzenberg: thank you for that question. that is the key to what we do. getting good data and putting it in a way that's usable, not only

to our responders, but to those in the community who are working on the team that's doing prevention, doing mitigation. trying to makeure communities safer. and as we have seen hotter, dryer conditions, the risk air -- drier conditions the risk areas have expanded. i will say and said in my testimony as well, one of the keys to me and my profession and my representation as a responder is that that data becomes available as real time as possible to those that are on the grounds doing the work. so there is application in both prevention mitigation and predictive analysis and incident command in real time situational awareness. ms. bonamici: my time has expired. i yield back. chair lofgren: thank you very much. . mr. posey is recognized. mr. posey: thank you, madam chair. i appreciate you having this

hearing. mr. geissler, the proceedings of the national academy of science issued a report entitled human presence diminishes the importance of climate in driving fire activity across the united states. this report is significant because it found that climate was significantly less important where humans were more pelfent suggesting that human influence override or even exceed the effect of climate change from fire activity. madam chair, i would ask unanimous consent to submit this report for the record. chair lofgren: without objection. mr. posey: thank you so much. based on your experience to prevent fires, should our limited resources be focused more or specifically on what and how we are building in fire zones rather than the broader topic of climate change sfl mr. guyser, i appreciate your response -- mr. geissler, i appreciate your response.

mr. geissler: i appreciate that. when we talk about fire and fire prevention, one of the earlier panelists mentioned the greatest numbers of fires are caused by humans. whether it be a spark or a campfire. we use the old smokey bear message. only you. bottom line is with developing in wildland urban areas, we are getting more team people so you have more opportunities for fires to occur. it's not that they are trying to prevent t. but it's greater opportunities n my own state of washington the west side while it does have forest that is typically have a longer duration between fires because of the fuel pines, that's where our biggest population is. we are seeing significant fires there. but at the same time if you look at our forests and forest resiliency, climate has had been -- an impact on that also. combining with both challenges,

that's why a lot of what you see happening right now is an emphasize on working towards -- emphasis towards working towards a healthier forest, greater resiliency and make them more fire adapted. for me it's a two prong approach. we have to get our fuel situation under control. we have to be able to keep our landscapes resilient whether it's a forest or a range land. but at the same time there is an-an education process, prevention process, which we have to get people to be aware of what they are doing. be able to prevent those fires, and then in our planning efforts ask people who move into these beautiful areas, we have to get those areas better prepared for the interactions of the fires that will inevitably come. chair lofgren: can you hear us?

mr. geissler: i cannot hear you anymore. i cannot hear the congressman. mr. posey: is this better? mr. geissler: yes. thank you. mr. posey: i'm asking if you would be kind enough to why we need to include our communities, those where we have built homes for those businesses and schools in fire simlation models. -- simulation models. .

opposed to the bill thank you db mr. posy: i see my time has expired. thank you very much. ms. lofgren: thank you. mr. bera of california is now recognized. mr. bera: thank you, madam chairwoman, and the ranking member. obviously, this is a hugely important issue for us in california. if i think about why i left the state of california, from hiking in the back country as a boy scout hiking the sierra nevadas, etc., kofrpg out there, it is now scarred by forest fires. i will ask a series of questions and i ask the witness to keep their answers short so i can get through a number of these. i want to make sure i understand on the fencing side, i heard a number of the witnesses talk about how we just haven't

allocated the satellite necessary. we have infrared sensing devices. we have the ability to put satellites in space so they're constantly monitoring the area 24/7. we have ground capabilities to surveil these areas. it's not a technology issue. it's a resource allocation issue, if i get that correct. and is that an accurate sense? >> yeah. we can use cal fire as an example. cal fire adopted the latest science and software package available and it allows to track resources, firefighters -- it puts the fire prediction model in there. dr. clements: it's the state of the science. that's available. that information gets some satellite, fire guard data so they can map it. but those data aren't really

applied to the research community. yes, the resources -- it's a resource issue. cal fire has already adopted it and it's successful. they have a new system for the whole state, and it's a really good model that should be used nationally. mr. bera: thank you. fantastic. that's something we as a committee can work in a bipartisan way. question for mr. geissler. one of the issues i worked on, we allocated resources for forestry management, etc. we did this thing called fire guard where we'll take those resources and send them to fight the fires. i know we tried to address the issue of fire borrowing. i suspect we can do more on the forestry management side to mitigate some of these forest fires, is that correct? mr. geissler: yes, sir. the fire borrowing issue was actually helped tremendously by some legislation that occurred a couple years ago. really, the emphasis right now needs to be to take that --

those dollars and really force them onto the ground and making sure they are being put into the highest priority areas that we have. a lot of times when we're doing forest management, i call them random acts of conservation. where a lot of it is kind of spread across the landscape and prioritizing the funds, making sure they get to the ground is something we should all emphasize and work harder on. mr. bera: ok. great. that legislation was passed in a bipartisan way. i think this is another area where we can work together as democrats and republicans, you know, to really make sure we're actively managing our forests, mitigating some of these fires. mr. litzenberg, let me ask you a question. four, five years ago, i had two of my local fire chiefs who happened to be up in washington, d.c., visiting. they started talking about the stresses that we're putting on our firefighters.

since then, i talked to a number of -- i represent a suburban, urban community. but a lot of the firefighters go into the hills to supplement cal fire. they're almost constantly working during fire season. we put together a piece of legislation called the heroes act a few years ago which was passed out of the house in this congress. really identifying and trying to address the pressures and stress that are leading to firefighter suicide, firefighter ptsd, etc. if you can just quickly comment on the stresses that the men and women are under, both urban and suburban, but also those in the forestry service. mr. geissler: chief litzenberg: it's in all levels, behavioral stressors, physical stressors. the more you ask from a

workforce that's already strapped, the more you ask to serve in terms of hours in day, weeks, year, the more exposure you give into smoke of human suffering the greatest stressors we have. we always appreciate in solutions. we are just beginning to discover the effect that these stresses have on our response force. mr. bera: we passed that out of the house in a bipartisan way. we hope the senate will send it to the president's desk. with that i yield back. ms. lofgren: thank you. mrs. kim of california is now recognized. mrs. kim: thank you, chair lofgren and ranking member lucas for holding this hearing. i want to thank the witnesses for being with us today. unfortunately, wildfires in my district and the rest of california, where congressman bera and i are from, we think it will be more precellant every year. with most of california in extreme drought, the longer

wildfire season is being exacerbated by the dryness of our landscape and the record breaking temperatures. adding insult to injury, the wildfire smoke and ash make it to affect our air quality and drinking water. i hope we can work in a bipartisan manner to better coordinate our federal efforts in producing wildfires and adapt cutting edge solutions to detect fires as soon as they start. mr. geissler, i represent california's 39th district where we have unfortunately seen the devastating effects of wildfires, not only in my community, but across the state of california. so how can we ensure coordination between federal, state, and local communities to share available information and tools to better respond to wildfires? mr. geissler: thank you for that question, congresswoman. i appreciate it. the one thing that i will efrp size is you -- efrp size is you

should be proud of the national system we do have currently. the interaction we have between federal, state, and local agencies is something that other countries come to try to duplicate. but there's always room for improvement. getting to common operating systems, being able to share data, being able to share and communicate effectively is really some of the items that if we can address those, it's critical. a lot of times it's just the difference between two computer systems or literally the links that we might be able to get from broadband that prevent some of the sharing. and so it sounds kind of basic the need but the willingness and the ability to do it is there. a lot of times it is just making sure that the connections are made, whether it be introducing two people, literally, just doing that, all the way to making sure that our systems link together and operate

effectively. the system that was just described that cal fire has is absolutely amazing. it is doing some great work. part of the basis of that is its ability to start communicating across jurisdictional authorities and that's what we're all looking for, that ability to effectively share all of these resources that we currently have. mrs. kim: so nraa has designed the next generation of [indiscernible] so have any of your colleagues in designing these satellites for wildfire detection facilities? if not, what advice would you give to help make the better solution more effective in wildfire detection and prevention? mr. geissler: so i will say i am unaware of any of my colleagues have worked directly with noaa with satellites. i will say in my past life, i was able to work with the

national severe storm labs in norman, oklahoma, and i know the interaction between the national weather service and state agencies is very strong. and we utilize a lot of that satellite technology and that there have been conversations about how effectively those can be used at the noaa level also. but i'm unaware of anyone that's speaking directly to them. but i do agree, it's a huge opportunity for us all. mrs. kim: so you are familiar with the high resolution model? have you had input on that development of any of these models? and in your opinion, what further research and development is needed to make existing models more effective? mr. geissler: a lot of it is being coordinated through the wildland leadership council where we have all of the partners at the table. so you not only have state foresters, but you also have mayors and other members of the various levels of government

really having those discussions. so it's a really powerful forum to kind of discuss the needs and where we go forward. so going into the future, we're really looking, again, to try to enforce that and try to get more of the outreach. there's a very recent memo even in fact between c.d.c. and e.p.a. discussing wildfire smoke and actually being able to address all of the research and coordination that was there. and all of that was actually made possible through the interactions that we've had at that wildland leadership council. it sounds like i'm a broken record related to potentially some of these problems but it's basic funding we need for research but just the social science of communication and effectively making sure we share resources across the table. mrs. kim: thank you. i see my time is up so i yield

back. ms. lofgren: thank you. ms. stevens is now recognized. ms. stevens: thank you, chair lofgren, for presiding over today's hearing. thank you to our witnesses for your incredible written and spoken testimony. your written testimonies, in particular, were quite inspiring. and i really enjoyed reading them. in michigan, during this month alone, the national weather service has issued multiple red flag fire warnings throughout the state and in particular, last year we saw fire outbreaks in the northern michigan. dr. clements, in your testimony you focus on programs that are aimed at fire weather research and wildfire prediction. could you tell me more about the types of climate-smart investments in research that are needed for better -- for us to

better understand the influences of wildfire on weather and vice versa? dr. clements: yeah, thank you, congresswoman, for the question. i think one focus i mentioned earlier is this couple fire atmosphere modeling tool because it's the only tool that allows the atmosphere to drive the fire and the fire itself to drive the atmosphere. and that's where we get our most dangerous fires is when we have big plumes and you can't predict where that fire's going to go. so investment into high resolution coupled atmospheric models is critical. like i mentioned earlier, it's used in -- so greece, it's their national model. they have already adopted it. national center for atmospheric research is building on that model. so these are the tools we need to invest in. it predicts smoke at very high resolution so you can tell a community what the smoke concentration is going to be an hour, tomorrow, or the next day. so that's where i would really focus a lot of investment.

ms. stevens: do you have recommendations or any examples that you know of how the federal government is working across agencies to forecast or predict these fires and better inform and protect the public? dr. clements: well, yeah. so in terms of national, we have the national fire danger rating system which allows us to understand what the fire risk is. and so that goes across the nation. that's a u.s. forest service product. but it needs to be a little bit more higher resolution in terms of forecasting certain areas. for fire behavior research, it's agency specific. we don't really have a fire behavior prediction system at a national level. ms. stevens: -- ms. lofgren: you're muted. ms. stevens: i muted myself. another major priority for us, including myself on this committee, has been the effort to strengthen our stem pipeline to ensure we have trained

scientists and engineers who are ready to help to address the 21st century challenges that are before us. and dr. mccarty and dr. clements, are there skills from the fire management side of this work that you believe would benefit the stem workforce over late stem workforce training and how would you recommend those skills to be transferred? dr. mccarty: so i'm not from ohio. i'm from eastern kentucky. i'm married to a man from michigan. my daughter was born in the u.p. so i know about appalachia fire. i started actually as an undergrad working for the daniel boone national forest and learned technical skills. as a first generation student, that was really important for me as a pipeline into graduate school at the university of maryland to have that applied

workforce working on fire risk modeling because of the southern pine beetle infestation and that's one of the reasons why i was able to get a graduate assistanceship from a small school in appalachia because i had worked on these types of on-the-ground management, stem skills in computing and data science. and so i didn't come from a -- very prestigious undergraduate institution, though it is great. and so that helped me in that pipeline. so i do think that throughout holistically the wildfire science community, this is a good way to get anyone from anywhere, you know, whether they're a woman or a man, nonbinary, to get involved. because we are welcomed. this is a problem, you know, across all 50 states. i would just say that and turn it over to dr. clements.

dr. clements: real quick. so yeah, we created a new wildfire sciences minor and so that allows us to bring students from a diverse background to give them tool sets they can take to their business major, if they're a psychology major, they are aware of the wildfire problem as well as training that meteorologists need around the nation. thank you. ms. stevens: thank you so much. ms. lofgren: the gentlelady's time has expired. and we'll turn now to mr. feenstra. mr. feenstra: thank you, chairwoman lofgren and ranking member lucas. thank you to our witnesses for your testimony and sharing your extensive research and your experience with us. this question is for mr. geissler. in 2020, iowa experienced 126 wildfire incidents that burned almost 2,200 acres. these fires can jump from burning grasslands to agricultural fields, wreaking financial devastation for our farmers. what is the current state of

understanding as to how a forest or a grass-based wildfire interacts with spreads across agricultural land? what research questions remained to be answered in this domain? mr. geissler: thank you, congressman, for that question. there is a lot of work that is actually ongoing relative to the interaction between agriculture lands and wildland fires. more most wildland managers, we utilize a lot of agriculture croplands because at certain times they are the most irrigated spots on the planet and we're able to use them as far as fire control. as you know and others on the committee know, at various stages of the crop cycle, you're going to have conditions where crops can be damaged or that the fuel that is remaining on the ground can carry a wildfire.

so basically, a lot of the types of fuel that we're seeing on the ground do fit with some of our existing models. they need to be fine tuned somewhat as far as the local conditions and a lot of the local agencies do some of that work in-house just to correlate the types of agricultural crops that they're currently seeing on the ground relative to the standard fuels model that we have. but there is probably some ongoing work that could happen there. and especially where it comes into crop protection going forward. mr. feenstra: thank you. i've seen that a lot with our corn crop in the fall and soybeans when we're ready to harvest and a spark is set off by a combine or whatever and we have a lot of devastation. i have one other question for you. iowa's also home to numerous lakes and rivers which are important for recreation, economic activities for my constituents. when discussing wildfires, we commonly focus on the damage and

destruction due to the flames and vegetation and manmade infrastructures. however, i'd like to ask, what consequences can high-intensity and high-heat wildfires have on watersheds? and what additional research do we need to better understand these impacts? mr. geissler: i'm actually very glad you brought that up. postfire recovery is something a lot of us within the council and within the community are really looking to how do we better do a better job of this. right now, if you look at resources that are available, forest service does have what they call have burn area response teams that can evaluate and look to those areas what are going to be the impact, how do we recover. more specifically, a lot of that reinvolves around -- revolves around impacts to water quality and impact to vegetation. the resources at the state and

local level are limited. a lot of that does not get done. but when you have the effects of a catastrophic wildfire or one that removes a significant portion of a vegetation, obviously that's going to have an impact on water quality downstream. and so the idea of what we need to do, how we address it is all being discussed right now. i know that the national sciences groups are actually coordinating through usts and others. we're trying to come to beater way to effectively -- to a better way to effectively address these fires. it doesn't matter if you're in a mountainous terrain where people think it's more significant or more visible, i should say, but on all aspects of watersheds if you have these kind of damaging fires, you can impact the water quality. mr. feenstra: yeah. i really appreciate that information. we see that in iowa quite a bit

where all of a sudden you have the buffer strip gets burned away and all of a sudden you have significant erosion. there's really not a lot to stop that until the next spring when the grass grows back or vegetation grows back. it's always a concern for me. i thank you for your responses and i thank you to all the testimony of each one of you and i yield my time back. thank you. ms. lofgren: thank you. ms. stansbury is now recognized. ms. stansbury: thank you, madam chairwoman. thank you so much for holding this important hearing this morning. i also want to thank chief litzenberg for being here this morning from santa fe county which is from my home state in new mexico. thank you for your service and to all of our local, state, county, federal and tribal firefighters, thank you for your work on the front lines protecting our community. and i also want to thank you for sharing your expertise this morning. so i think it goes without saying that addressing wildfire is not only a matter of

protecting our public safety and the ecological well-being of our forests and our communities, but in new mexico, it's also a matter of national security because a significant number of our forest lands also are part of our national laboratories and federal military installations as well. but it's also the single largest threat to water and drought resilience in new mexico and much of the west as well. as well as our future climate adaptation and economic security. and as was noted by chief litzenberg's testimony, we're already spending billions of dollars a year at the federal and local and tribal levels to both suppress fire and fight fires across the west. so one of the things i wanted to talk a little bit about today is our forest science. so we focused a lot here today on fire weather, warning systems, and hazards. but one of the most significant and important ways that we can

address and mitigate the catastrophic fires that are affecting the west is through forest management. and this is especially true in new mexico where a lot of really exciting climate and forest management science is happening. so we're seeing a lot of really incredible partnerships between our tribes and pueblos, our local county officials, nonprofit organizations like the nature conservancy, our national laboratories who are doing really exciting, complex modeling around forest dynamics, carbon sequestration, soil, and ways we can actually target our forest treatments. in fact, one of the things that's most exciting to me about having chief litzenberg here this morning is that he was intimately involved in these activities in what's called the santa fe fire shed program which is a collaborative of all of these different programs. my question is actually for our chief. mr. litzenberg, i wonder if you

can talk a little bit about the santa fe fire shed efforts and share with us how the science was leveraged and partnerships were leveraged and how we might scale this exciting collaborative model across the west. chief litzenberg: i sure can, congresswoman. i very much appreciate that question because it's near and very dear to me. the santa fe -- the greater santa fe fire shed coalition is a very successful collaboration. it was built from the ground up around the premise if you bring the right people to the table, much like you have i think on this panel, who can put their two cents into the mix, you often get a product that's much better than a single person or a single organization could have come up with. and in that coalition, we have all levels of government. we have nonprofit. we have scientists. we have people from the labs. and we even have people who don't necessarily agree with what we're doing. we had regular meetings to talk about how do we make our

watershed and our forests healthier and safer and ultimately protect our communities both recreation, for life safety and prevent the large fires and those things that occur? we talked about smoke, we talked about fire debris. they have huge destructive potential to not only primary effects, second and tirtiary effects. anything you can do for research and create data on things and toss them into a room where smart minds can think together and come up with solutions, much like the santa fe fire shed coalition, i think replication across the nation is much in order. thanks for asking that question. ms. salisbury: thank you. i know many in the community are very familiar with these efforts in new mexico but it's a real exciting model in the rio grande watershed, restoring our forest, are a model for the nation.

finally, i want to say there's a coupled opportunity while we're talking about fire mitigation to talk about carbon sequestration. a recent study by the climate alliance in new mexico showed that reforestation of burn catastrophic fire areas has a huge potential to help capture carbon. so i really think that's an important part of the science that we need to be introducing into the conversation. and with that, madam chairwoman, i yield back. thank you so much. ms. lofgren: thank you very much. now the gentleman from california, mr. obernolty, is recognized. -- mr. obernolte, is recognized. mr. obernolte: the prevention of these fire are critical to the people i represent. i know a lot of people in this room share that concern. i -- one of the things i was struck by in the testimony from all four of our witnesses is the

inadequacy of the current satellite data that we're getting. both in terms of geospatial resolution and in terms of tempraresolution. i didn't know it was still this bad they will be talking about geospatial resolution of a kilometer and tempraresolution of only one or two frames per day is clearly not going to be adequate to generate the kind of wildfire models that we need to predict wildfire behavior and certainly is not going to be as useful as it could be to be able to give early warning when new wildfires start. that's where i'd like to ask some questions about. i probably could pick any of the panelists. dr. mccarty, i was struck by your testimony about this. can you talk a little bit about what the prospects are for improved satellite imaging, if we have anything in the pipeline, and in particular, maybe talk about the fact that i know we're talking about

geospatial -- we're talking about geostationary satellites here but the state-of-the-art satellites now are lower orbit satellites which might solve your spatial resolution problems, also, is there some prospect we can use some of the assets we have to solve this problem? dr. mccarty: yes. thank you, congressman, for that question. i do think we have a lot of work going on at nasa, at noaa. i know nist even has a small workshop a few years ago of data fusion, of thinking about how to intercorporate various polar orbiting satellites, including low earth orbit and some of our commercial platforms. as well as our open source geostationary to provide better temporal resolution. it's more complicated with spatial resolution because you just kind of have to accept the data as it was.

how it was engineered. if it was engineered at 10 kilometers, it's 10 kilometers. you have to take that location and try to compare it to 10 meters in resolution. we also had in the last 10 years and much credit to nasa, usgs and noaa with their collaboration with european space agency, with the india space agency, with the japanese space agency in trying to improve some of our other collaborations that we have open source access to their platforms and are developing, you know, kind of a cross-pollination of coordination. and to be fair, sometimes our satellite systems are developed because they are meeting the needs of the community. and not just the fire community. often, they need to meet -- agriculture and food security. they need to meet biodiversity and forest management. they need to think about water quality as well as the atmosphere. sometimes what we need for fire

will get maybe pushed to the end or at least the resolution will be downgraded a bit because there are these other components that also need to be captured in the same platform. and so i do think that noaa's geoxo in collaboration with nasa, they did hold a workshop last summer with local, state, and federal level fire researchers and practitioners and management to get their input on that. but even that system, which was an r.f.p. was issued to and contractors were selected earlier this spring, its highest resolution will be half a kilometer. and so, really, we need to think about setting an agenda where we want spatial resolution that's helpful, both tactically and strategically for fire management. if i will return to you if you have further questions. mr. obernolte: thank you.

i completely agree. i'm horrified we don't have access to higher resolution data than that. as a scientist myself, i can tell you there's no way you can create meaningful prediction models based on that. as you say, it will be very -- we got all of these high speed aerial assets for fighting the fires. it will be helpful to have real-time information about when the fire started and where. i hope we in congress can help you to solve this problem and get access to this higher resolution data because then we can take the next step, work with the national science foundation, and catalog more research into this topic. i see my time has expired. i want to thank you to all of our panelists. i yield back, madam chair. ms. lofgren: thank you. dr. foster is recognized. mr. foster: thank you, madam chair. dr. clements, in your testimony you state your team has deployed to nearly 40 wildfires in california with specialized equipment and including mobile doppler radar assets and these

tools provided a lot of insights into the dynamic of plume wildfires and how the fires in the atmosphere interact with each other on the large scale. you know, back in my district in illinois, last week we had some -- some tornados. and it was amazing when you looked at the data that was available in real time for -- from doppler radar that my wife and i basically came to -- got into a safe area, pushed on the area and we could watch the tornado vortex as it moved across neighborhood just south of my house. so i was wondering -- i'm very interested in the technological developments and sensors, particularly cost reduction, that would help us have a much higher density with sensors on there. so in regards to that, roughly, the equipment that you deploy, how much does it cost, if you would have to buy another one of those? dr. clements: thank you for your

question, congressman. so the radar is a special radar, k-band. it's custom made. the not that much expensive. it's about $600,000, $700,000. not including the truck and that stuff. that's probably a low cost high-resolution doppler radar. the lightdars are less expensive, about $350,000. they are not super expensive instruments. to set up a network of those would be somewhat costly. now, the advantage of also the lightdar is to look at vertical wind profiles, in understanding the onset of critical winds or fire weather, particularly in california with the public safety power shutoffs. so there's a need for those. just to get back to the surface weather station discussion, california has more surface weather stations than at anyplace in the planet because of utilities. they invested a lot into

meteorological data for their modeling. i think we can get the cost down if we build more instruments or we can use new engineering technologies to build these instruments better and cheaper. so there is a way to do it. in addition, we have the national radar network for noaa radar network we use for wildfire observations as well. so there's a lot of things we can do. mr. foster: i think one of the things we have to get better at as a nation is making high-tech stuff cheaper in large quantity. i think you could boot strap this if there was an agreement if we deploy tens of thousands of equipment like you deploy all over the country. pu might find the cost curve -- you might find the cost curve goes down. are there data points you like? you mentioned ground base stations. you can imagine drone swarms that comes over fire. maybe more investments in satellites. or maybe more investment in just

the inventories of all the consumables that are on ground. is there an agreement on what you'd really like? or is that something that's still under discussion? dr. clements: well, i think in terms of the fire weather community, we're probably in agreement we need more atmospheric observations, but then we also need to understand what the fire's doing at every instant. one technology that's coming out is small radars that are cheaper, that you can put on power poles or utility assets. so that way you can scan everything. versus just the national radar network. so using smaller radars that are getting more cost-effective could be a really good asset in the future. mr. foster: could someone say a little bit about the collaboration, the state of collaboration, particularly with d.o.d.? i don't think i'm giving away any national security secrets to say we spend a lot of time looking for infrared flares for various purposes. so i was wondering, do you hit a roadblock where you say, well, you know, we could give you

information but then we don't want the bad guys to know we have this capability so we won't tell you? or is there a good collaboration in real time when there is a serious fire hazard? dr. clements: well, i guess i could take that from my knowledge. what we know is there a fire guard product that maps the fire in real time for fire agencies. those data are not publicly available. but the technology is there. so increasing that collaboration could be various or using that technology in a more public framework would be a beneficial to the research community. mr. foster: ok. that sounds like it could be a job for congress. the other possible collaboration might be insurance companies. do they look at detailed fire modeling to come up with their insurance rates on a house-by-house level, are there big players on this? dr. clements: we are working with some insurance companies now as well as utilities. there's so much investment needed in better understanding the fire problem.

insurance companies are definitely interested in the risk, for sure. mr. foster: ok. thank you. my time is up and i yield back. ms. lofgren: thank you. mr. webster is recognized. mr. webster: thank you, chair. thank you for holding this meeting. chief litzenberg, i have a question about -- you mentioned some items or fields of future focus in your report. things like remote sensing or fire mapping, things like that. which of those would be the highest priority? chief litzenberg: congressman, thanks for that question. it is a tough one for me to answer because in my view, all of these are somewhat related. and so if you're asking for a priority, it is a difficult one.

i can say that the creation of sensing networks go back to -- networks. i'll go back to the different about the coalition. part of the success of that is a lot of views. you get a better view when you get better viewpoints, whether it's social science or technology and data. the more we can create a sensor network that's both ground-based and up to the satellites that integrates and give us real-time forecasting, mapping, that to me is a huge priority. that actually falls into some of the other priorities, like putting that data in a single usable place where all levels of government are sharing data significantly. using that data to create situational awareness in real time for boots on the ground. and ultimately a network of communication that links all of these priorities together. again, it's hard for me to prioritize they work together. that's probably how i would do so since you asked me.

mr. webster: thank you for that. last week we had the new nasa administrator. and we talked about collaboration and how much is there and how it's working and so forth. he was -- he was pretty confident that there was a lot of collaboration from nasa in the areas of hurricane tracking and firefighting, floods, so forth. my question will be, this whole idea of remote sensing, are there -- should there be or are there already ways where that information is being coordinated and communicated to local and state foresters in communities to improve prevention and also

maybe mitigation in the area of forest fires? do you know anything about that? chief litzenberg: congressman, i can give you my opinion from being somebody at the local level. i always had the impression that that data exists and that it should be reachable and in places where there are good relationships, it often is, but it is really dependent on the caliber of those relationships. there are places nationally. we referenced wildland leadership council. we referenced the biocenter where integration is happening. we think it's happening well and thoroughly but it's not always getting out to the community level where decisions about prevention and mitigation can be made appropriately. it needs future improvements. mr. webster: it's something we need to work on. i yield back. ms. lofgren: the gentleman yields back. mr. sherman of california is recognized. mr. sherman: thank you.

i want to thank the committee for having this hearing. i take it personally, having been evacuated from my home just a couple of years ago with the saddle ridge fire, representing a district that goes right up against the city limits of los angeles. mr. geissler, in your written testimony, you note that the buildup of hazardous fuels on many of our publicly managed land are at historic levels. and you further note that past management activities have actually made our public lands even more vulnerable. how can research improve the mate -- maintenance issues to reduce fires like those we've seen in california? mr. geissler: thank you, congressman, for that question. and as you said, our forests and

landscapes are really at a point where their resiliency is questionable in many places. science and research has really been doing a lot of work relative to how we best turn the corner on these landscapes. there's always ongoing research related to fuels and what is on the ground. there's a lot of work within f.i.a., the forest inventory and analysis world, where essentially we're learning and more about the conditions are, what the state of our forests is so we can better address the issue that's there. and i will say, the forest inventory and analysis program through the forest service is one of those things that is kind of an unsung hero, providing us with a lot of long standing data and information related to how our forests and landscapes have changed over time.

so they're there. it's ongoing below the surface, and it does not get a lot of notice from those of us that are outside the community. but making sure that we have effective funding for forest inventory and analysis, and then programs like the joint biosciences program that helps coordinate the research, utilize some of that data, are really some of the critical needs. mr. sherman: firefighters, emergency officials, dr. clements, you indicated how they and community leaders can struggle with disaster management, wildfire season is increasingly becoming year-round. our firefighters are being asked to work impossible hours in hazardous conditions. dr. clements, how can we better use scientific modeling and the enormous amount of data that have been collected to better predict the number of firefighting personnel that we will need?

dr. clements: thank you for your question, congressman. so that's a difficult question. what we can do in the future is using some of these state-of-the-art fire prediction models to look at what -- what we should expect, how big are these fires going to be given changes in wind, changes in temperature and fuel, and so that can give us the fire resources and suppression needs in the future. that's one way to use some of these models that are very high resolution to look at what those needs could be in the future. mr. sherman: thank you. and i also want to take a minute to thank the appropriations subcommittee for funding a project or recommending a funding of a project in my district to replace invasive and highly flammable shrubs with native and fire resistant shrubs right there in the area of the

saddle ridge fires that we suffered through in recent years. i thank you for your comments and i yield back. ms. lofgren: the gentleman yields back. dr. barrett is recognized. mr. barrett: thank you, madam chair, and ranking member lucas, for holding this hearing. you know, i also learn something in this committee and so i really appreciate the professionalism and the expertise of our witnesses. and i thank them for being here today. i'm going to continue on a little bit with the conversation my colleague, mr. webster, was having. so my questions are going to be to chief litzenberg as well as mr. geissler. mr. baird: but chief, you mentioned in your testimony you highlighted that the collaboration among local fire departments with federal research and working with

n.s.f., nist or nist, and nasa, needs to further grow to improve the nation's wildfire response. and then you followed that with eight fields of future focus on this matter, such as remote sensing, fire mapping, and others. and so in that context, then i want to extend my question to be, how can we use these tools that you mentioned there to really increase the active forest manage. justice and the implementation of fuel treatments, because i think those have a real impact on being able to prevent many of these wildfires. and so with that, cleave, if -- chief, if you would care to comment, i'd appreciate that. chief litzenberg: thanks for the question, congressman. and, yeah, i'll give you my perspective again as a local responder. i think my perspective is probably shared by many responders and fire chiefs.

i said a few minutes ago and i'll say it again. i do believe there's a lot of data that's being created and a lot of very smart people, many of whom are here today, who are doing great things around fire science. and often, the missing link is how do i, as a community responder, how do i as a fire chief, get that data in a place that is usable and use it to do prevention and mitigation primarily? i often look at communities -- and we have the term fire communities -- i also look at communities much like an organ like a human. if you look at your body over the years, you counted on somebody to get data about you, doing brain scans if you have a heartache -- headache, you get data, and then you have a buddy that gives you a recommendation and what do you do about that, what do you do in terms of

prevention to make sure the ultimate effect is not catastrophic on your body? communities and ecosystems are no different. and we're creating data points. in my opinion, what we really need is a place where that data is collected in one single place where everybody is dumping everything they're learning into a single place and then there is somebody, a committee or a group or organization, much like a doctor, who's telling me as a local community, what do i do with that data? how can i make my forest healthier? how can i make my community safer? ultimately, how can i provide public safety to those who want to live safely within knows areas? mr. baird: thank you. mr. geissler, would you care to add to that? mr. geissler: yes. and chief litzenberg really hit the nail on the head. it's the availability and the utilization of all of this data that is being created and making sure that we have the ability to share it across the various jurisdictions. and it has happened in some

places. i can give you an example within my own state where we utilize data from federal, state, and local who we have come together and are sharing it across jurisdictional boundaries to develop a forest health strategy for our state. prioritizing all of the landscapes across all jurisdictions. and that is in collaboration with the u.s. forest service, state agencies, and locals. and it goes back to our forest health management. and we also used it on our wildfire strategy that we're building out. but it takes a lot of interagency discussions, and it takes an environment where there's a shared mission on how we need to address or what the end goals should be. and that, again, much like erik said, a lot of folks, organizations are essentially working on nair own and

discovering things. -- their own and discovering things. sometimes that reinvent wheels. getting it to one location. getting the information on how this can be used, collected, analyzed, and sent out and communicated is absolutely critical. mr. baird: thank you very much. i'm out of time so i yield back, madam chair. ms. lofgren: thank you very much. mr. beyer is recognized. mr. beyer: thank you, madam chair, very much. fascinating stuff. i'd like to start with dr. mccarty. nasa, the space aeronautic subcommittee of this committee, a few weeks ago on nasa climate science work, i heard a lot about remote sensing ability. this supports nasa's earth science activities. but primarily through data.

questions about commercial data transparency. accessibility, license restrictions that could have implications for free and open access for federally funded earth science data. so what are your perspectives on the challenges of commercial remote sensing data sets and wildfire research? dr. mccarty: thank you for that question, congressman. i mean, commercial data is proprietary. so when we -- full disclosure who has -- they must be in the region the project which i competitively applied for has been selected. and so if i, for instance, between noaa and nasa, i was on the nasa side, i was able to look at commercial data sets and still able to look at data sets for regions -- we flew the dc-8

through the smoke. if i want to supply that to different states, that would not be permitted. i need to go back and request and ask why. the commercial data is definitely an add-on. it's one of the data fusion projects we want to include. it requires a high level of computing and data science and coding skills to implement. our nasa and noaa earth observation products are often some of the best in the world. they're plug and play in a lot of ways. our commercial data sets are not quite there. that's not necessarily their business model. they haven't been given the right incentive, stick or carrot, to develop those products. they would be something that would fill in that gap if we want multiple daily inventory. but to really get at some of the fire weather, you need a weather system, a geostationary system.

mr. beyer: let me ask a larger, extensive question. it seems like things have changed since i was a kid. smoky the bear, 70%, 84%, fires are still human caused. back then, no fires. and then later on, i served a number of years on the house natural resources committee where some of my friends were like, we need to do much more forestry because we have to clear out all the trees and that way it won't burn down. then we have our most -- we had our most recent president raising the forest. i know climate change is complicated. all of this immensely. i know you have projects with prescribed fires. is there a larger scientific sense of how best to manage forests yet? with respect to fires? dr. mccarty: we have, i would say a coalescing convergence.

more science is frustratingly like that. there's much more to know. however, what we learned is north america is a fire adaptive ecosystem. many of our areas are adapted to burn. it has shown that time and time again. prescribed burning is one of the forest techniques -- like you said there was no fires. now we're in a fire deficit where we have many of our fireland areas that aren't having enough fires. so we need more prescribed burning. that's when we talk about prescribed burning. we have some systems that burn too much. close to our agricultural system. but some of our rain systems need to be burned more. it becomes this complex, what i like to call a patchwork clue of what the ecosystem really looks like. so management and science has to

really view that complexity. and that includes our fuel systems, not just thinking of it as all grasses, heavy buildings. and so on and so forth. back to you. mr. beyer: madam chair, chief litzenberg, last 20 seconds, do you have anything to add? chief litzenberg: i think that was a solid answer and i agree. mr. beyer: i look forward to the science continuing to evolve. madam chair, i yield back. ms. lofgren: thank you. and the gentleman from texas, mr. weber, is recognized. mr. weber: thank you, madam chair. this is for mr. clements to start with. the state with the most fires, is that data readily available? dr. clements: yeah. the data is nationally compiled. so it can be easily accessed. generally. mr. weber: did i understand in your exchange with bill

foster -- i thought you said the data wasn't given. what data was that, do you remember that exchange? dr. clements: no. mr. weber: no. ok. and then i go to mr. geissler. do we have -- you had a discussion with daniel webster. do we have enough interagency interaction and is there somebody that tracks that and how successful that's been? mr. geissler: we have exceptional interagency cooperation at both the national, regional, and state levels. we have a lot of discussions among the state foresters, the emergency managers on how we can improve it, along with our federal partners at fema and the usda forest service and d.o.i. and others. the collaboration reinvolves around the -- revolves around the national fire center in boise as well as wildland leadership council. and we really try to go through what is really an ongoing

continuous improvement kind of cycle with relation to that. all of the agreements that are in place, in fact, whether it be master agreement between federal agencies and states or numerous state-to-state or state-to-local agreements all usually have some form of an assessment piece that's involved in it whereby we take a look at how it's working and try to improve on that. mr. weber: has there been a discussion about whether or not if you widen the rights of ways in some of these heavily forested areas that would reduce some of the wildfires? mr. geissler: those typically are occurring at the local and state level as we do our wildfire prevention planning. there's a lot of work, even with your home state of texas, with the planning, whereby you take and look at a community and determine what would be the best

way to mitigate the risk to that community as well as mitigate the risk to the natural resources around it. and those are all part of kind of a process that's utilized that we try to get done, obviously, before the fire gets accomplished. texas, in fact, has an excellent program that they're utilizing in order to have those discussions. and to your point, i mean, a lot of it occurs all across the united states, across all levels of government, and within the local communities and even private citizens. but a lot of it involves just giving a framework how to get it done. that's how funding and research can be utilized. >> we'll leave this now to keep our long time commitment to live gavel-to-gavel coverage of congress. this conversation will be live on c-span.org. the u.s. house about to gavel in for the afternoon. they'll